As we witness diversity slowly upend racism as the national pass time in the United States of America, we must attempt to put our finger on the paradigm shifts on the racial amalgamation evolution to better appreciate the changed racial mores. Virginia’s infamous 1924 Racial Integrity Law declared anyone with one drop of Negro blood as Negro even if they appeared white as quadroon and octoroon to offer insurance against the nation’s bounty and power spreading beyond America’s Anglo-Saxon population. Racial Integrity also prevented the creeping of white culture into a new mongrel breed by making family ties across racial lines illegal.

The Southern white citizen councils feared the future voting and economic prowess of people of nonwhite parentage in a truly free society should socioeconomic parity become a reality versus a fantasy for nonwhite America. They seemed to take solace in the one drop rule making Caucasians embarrassed to admit they had nonwhite relatives; thereby, insuring non-interracial family ties as the national norm.  

On August 4, 1961, Caucasian Stanley Armour Dunham accepted his new nonwhite grandson, Barack Obama, Jr. This white grandfather’s actions over the years publically showed that he loved this child.  Dunham’s public display of affection for a nonwhite child was sacrilegious from the white citizen councils' point of view for they knew there are some things that only a man can teach easily to a boy meaning this nonwhite child would adopt the values of his white grandfather as his manhood role model. Dunham’s openly loving his nonwhite grandchild is an American racial paradigm shift; especially since, it came in the midst of Alabama Governor George Wallace exploiting racial hatred demagoguery in his 1963 inaugural address, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Governor George Wallace and the white citizen councils knew if white girls were exposed to black males on an equal footing that the interracial genii would be out of the bottle. They had to exploit every trick possible to defeat public school integration following the 1954 US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. the Board of Education knocking down the infamous 1896 “separate but equal” ruling that legitimated racial segregation and kindled Jim Crow laws. Dunham had moved pass the white citizen councils’ overt racism because now he had a brilliant white daughter with a brilliant black husband from whom came an interracial child.

The 1964 civil rights and 1965 voting rights acts coupled with the 1967 US Supreme Court ruling knocking down the infamous anti-miscegenation laws legitimated nonwhite socioeconomic parity in the economic mainstream. That meant these legal actions were the infrastructure necessary for a nonwhite to become President of the United States of America that makes them America’s next diversity paradigm shift. The white citizen councils’ nightmare came true with the 2008 election of African American Barack Obama to the US President for now the white privilege that they are promising their minions was now a relic of a by gone era.      

However, the white citizen councils did not abandon their objective to keep nonwhite America disenfranchised in the economic mainstream for they morphed into today’s Tea Party Movement. It is easy to find ourselves undoing the lies with which The Tea Party Movement has the nation enchanted that we may forget to praise the positive symbolism in President Barack Obama’s election setting the diversity tone in a post civil rights epoch.  We know the Tea Party is today’s iteration of the yesteryear’s Ku Klux Klan, so they see President Obama as a subhuman at best an errand boy for their darling former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

A white grandfather, who has a grandchild of Hispanic heritage, shared that he had noticed a lot more fathers participating in the care and upbringing of their children, since President Obama became The-Commander-in-Chief. I now pay a great deal more attention when I walk through my local parks where I see a lot more black fathers bringing the kids. In yesterday, I would see mostly black women with the children. I find myself wondering about the symbolic message in the missing black father on the deleterious impact on the black family structure.

The Joint Center reports, “Since 1950, there has been a substantial decrease in the marriage rates and an increase in the divorce rates of both African American and white women. The trends have been most pronounced among African Americans. The percentage of African American women who are married declined from 62% to 36.1% between 1950 and 2000. Among white women, the corresponding decline was from 66% to 57.4%. Trends in divorce have shown less difference between races, rising from 3% to 11.7% among blacks and from 2% to 10.2% among whites. ”

This data suggests that marriage is hearing death rattles in Black America. Therefore, I was overjoyed when my grandniece recently got married. I was trouble because I was giving thanks over something that should have been a natural occurrence.  It is very disquieting to realize that the gangster rappers are relegating black females to a level below the white racists’ chattel caste to treatment as animals. Stephanie Mwandishi Gadlin captures the deleterious mindset that the gangster rappers are perpetrating against black females in her Hip-hop’s (Unspoken) Ten Commandments. Commandment I does an excellent job of summing up the mainstream stature damage to the persona of black females by the gangster rappers.

“Commandment I: Thou must dis' black women. You are allowed to distinguish between bitches, hoes and "real sisters" only during interviews when asked to clarify your statements. You must talk about beating a woman up at least once on your CD or demo. On at least four (4) but no more than five (5) singles/demos you must talk about having rough and unprotected sex with a woman. You must also refer to your girlfriend or wife as a "bitch" in an endearing way. All music videos must reflect the aforementioned notions. You can talk about doing things to other people's mothers as acts of creative expression. You may also refer endearingly to an unplanned child as a ‘bastard,’ ‘shorty,’ ‘lil nigga,’ or ‘lil G.’”

The Ku Klux Klan now gets to laugh because the gangster rappers are doing an excellent job of destroying the Black Community with a mindset of self destruction by drugs, sex, and murder. When you think about today’s drive by shooting it is comparable to yesteryear’s KKK lynching where neighborhoods are controlled by fear.  On the other hand, today’s African American woman is a strong person not afraid of yesteryear’s KKK.

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This black female strength is a major asset for males secure in their own selves. White marriages sixty years ago may have been underpinned by the housewife with the husband as the breadwinner. Some old timers had reservations about educating women because they felt they would merely get pregnant and raise children. However, many black women never had the luxury of being housewives and dependent on their husbands for survival. Black women were often the breadwinner or a major contributor to the household finances as is the case today. Some insecure black males may find it very difficult to have a strong willed wife who can terminate the marriage anytime she desires to walk away.